Hitomi Yoshida -- Yay! Yay! Yay! (イェイ！イェイ！イェイ！)

 

Here I was...back in Toronto for good at the end of 2011 after many years of life in Japan. It was important and reassuring to get into a regular routine of stuff. Luckily, the idea of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" germinated in my brain fairly quickly but maybe even a few weeks earlier, the ol' biweekly Sunday ritual of meeting my anime buddy for anime and food had gotten started. Even within that ritual, there was a core viewing of a certain franchise's entries among all of the different series.

Yup, it was the "Pretty Cure"（プリティーキュア）franchise with all of their teams of super-powered magical girls and themes. I was first weaned on "Smile PreCure"（スマイルプリキュア!）because it started up right at the beginning of February 2012, and it turned out to be the one known arguably the most for its episodic comedy aspect. For example, just from the above summary of Cure March's character, I knew that she needed to lay off the Red Bull. It was ironic though that the finale of that series in early 2013 was surprisingly dark. 

Another thing that my buddy had told me was that the casting of the main characters was revelatory in that a lot of PreCure fans were really talking it up on social media when the seiyuu were announced, probably at the end of 2011. He stated that either most or all of the women cast as the five PreCures were maniac choices. I hadn't known what he was talking about at all, but later I found out that the actresses had been in previous anime or other media productions with certain bawdy reputations including Misato Fukuen（福圓美里）as leader Cure Happy. Apparently, she had been involved with eroge under different aliases. Hey, I'm not judging.

Having caught up on all of the previous shows in the PreCure franchise up to "Smile PreCure" and going forward with a few more seasons, I've seen and heard all of the opening and closing theme songs and credit sequences, and there have been ones that have been especially catchy such as the supremely poppy "Ganbalance de Dance"（ガンバランスdeダンス）used in the earlier shows and then the cool-as-anything "You make me happy!" for "Fresh Precure!"（フレッシュプリキュア!）which had its run in 2009 and whose ending credits sparked the beginning of the traditional dancing by the teams.

As the saying goes, "You always remember your first", and sure enough, that was "Yay! Yay! Yay!" at the end of each episode in the first half of the season of "Smile PreCure". As sung by frequent PreCure singer Hitomi Yoshida（吉田仁美）, this particular ending theme has been eclipsed on my favourite theme list by the aforementioned "Ganbalance de Dance" and "You make me happy!", but it's still a nice and upbeat tune to match the overall happy vibe of "Smile PreCure". Despite the presence of that electric guitar, there's something of that Swinging 60s Bacharach-friendly melody in "Yay! Yay! Yay!" which was composed by Hideaki Takatori（高取ヒデアキ）with lyrics by Minori（実ノ里）.